No matter how many times I observe at a large telescope, the sense of awe at using this marvel of human workmanship never leaves me. For almost 30 years, I have been gathering data on the planets with the 200-inch (5.1-meter) telescope on top of Palomar Mountainin southern California.

Observing engages all the senses: that unmistakable odor of pump oil is present as soon as one enters the dome enclosing the telescope, and the creak of lumbering machinery and the whirr of fast-moving gears fill the building. The cold thin air at high altitudes and the long winter nights in cramped observers’ cages placed within the telescope—this business is not armchair science. The bite has been taken away somewhat by heated control rooms, but one always has to wander outside to check the weather. Taste? Well, there are the never-ending cups of warmed-over coffee that astronomers drink to stay up all night, and the talismanic foods eaten to bring clear weather (one friend swears by Pop-Tarts, while another favors kosher pickles). And, of course, the power of sight is elevated to unimaginable heights: the large Palomar telescope could detect a light bulb in New York, if the Earth weren’t round. The modern telescope enhances our senses and provides us with a sixth sense: the ability to see wavelengths not detectable by our eye, such as the infrared. One of the nicknames for the 200-inch—the Cathedral of Telescopes—speaks to its place beyond mere technology and to the pure wonder of studying the heavens.

The 200-inch was built under the supervision of the American astronomer George Ellery Hale, and it is often called simply the Hale Telescope. It was completed in 1948, and for almost 30 years it was the largest telescope in the world (that honor is currently held by the Large Binocular Telescope at 11.9 meters, or nearly 39 feet). The mirror was manufactured at Corning Glass Works in New York State, and transported cross-country. The first mirror cracked and had to be recast. Great discoveries from the 200-inch include measurements of the expansion of the universe, the structure of galaxies and stars, and the evolution of planets.

My own work at Palomar centers on understanding material in the outer Solar System that may have provided the building blocks for early life on Earth, after it was transported here by comets. Planning telescopic observations takes a great deal of time, because you don’t want to waste a minute of it. But what takes the most time is analysis of the data. These days, astronomers gather their data on computers rather than film, and one night’s data amounts to many megabytes. In the past, keeping the telescope centered on an object was a grueling task, but now computers do that too.

As with any historical object, legends and lore surround the 200-inch. For many years, women were not allowed to observe there, because of the “bathroom problem.” (When the fabled astronomer Margaret Burbridgewanted to observe, she put in a proposal under her theorist husband’s name and slipped into the observer’s cage at the last minute.) Astronomers sleep and eat in a building known as the “Monastery,” and for years there was a rigid seating arrangement at the dinner table. Wearing a coat and tie, the Principal Observer for the Hale Telescope sat at the head of the table. Assistants and graduate students sat at ever greater distances, indicating their relative lack of importance. Now it’s just a bunch of tired astronomers, men and women, in jeans and t-shirts, joking with the cook and support staff.

Bonnie Buratti, principal scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., has written and contributed to multiple Britannica articles, including Tethys, Titan, Dione, Mimas, Enceladus, and Iapetus, all of which are moons of Saturn, an entry that Buratti recently revised.

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